


Blood Red Revenge

by Gamebird



Series: Gamebird's TOG Series [4]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Cigarette Smoking, Deleted scene for Heart Piercing, Drowning, Gen, Not a stand-alone, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29167635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gamebird/pseuds/Gamebird
Summary: In the story Heart Piercing, Quynh captures and tortures Booker. Much of it happens off-screen. In this fic, it's on screen, tracking her escape from her watery prison through her decision to end it all in fire.
Series: Gamebird's TOG Series [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138370
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	Blood Red Revenge

At long last, the metal of the iron maiden gave out. Quynh had outlasted iron. The exultation she felt was as good as a breath of cool, crisp air on a mountain morning. She shoved off one of the doors of the device, corrosion and sediment and sea life having served to weld it together until now. Then she died, predictably enough. Just as predictably, she revived a moment later. She extracted herself from the tomb. And she died again. When she woke, she pushed off from it, heading upward with all the might her restored life allowed.

She cycled several times through life and death as she rose toward the surface, kicking when she was able and drifting when she was not. She was patient, but hopeful. Eventually, she made it, spewing saltwater out of her lungs and sucking in air, an ephemeral substance she'd only been able to dream about for far too long. It was funny how she'd taken water for granted until she died over and over in the desert before Andromache found her. Now she'd taken air for granted and Andromache … should have found her.

It was the first thought she put together that wasn't directly related to escaping her prison. That thought being that she shouldn't have been in the prison at all. Not after all this time. She shouldn't have had to rely on the prison falling apart around her. Andromache should have come. She should have found her. She had not. The realization left her empty inside, hollow like a buoy bobbing in the water.

She'd been angry before, but that had been an impotent fury at being contained and endlessly tormented. It hadn't been directed like it was now. Wrath filled the emptiness to overflowing – anger at being abandoned to the elements, jealousy of whatever had kept Andy's attention, bitterness, hatred, rage!

Andromache had made promises. Andromache had not kept them. Quynh was beyond caring about the why or how. All that mattered was the pain, the misery, the five hundred years of dying. Had she died a million times? Ten million? More? She'd been lied to by the most important person in her life, lied to in a way that saw her suffering through uncounted deaths.

Some of that could have been prevented if Andy had come for her like she had in the desert. But then, in the desert, it had suited Andy's needs. Had Andy not told her how finding Quynh had saved her life as well as Quynh's? Restored her sanity, gave her back her sense of self? It was selfish, that's what it was.

When Quynh had been locked in the iron maiden, Yusuf and Nicolo had still existed. And since then, two other immortals had joined them. Andy didn't need Quynh anymore. She had them. And thus, no one had come for Quynh. Selfishness. It had to be selfishness. It was disgusting that she'd never seen through Andy's faithlessness before. It was never about Quynh. It was always about _Andy_ and what _Andy_ needed!

It was dark. She could see the stars in the clear sky and work out which way was north. She could also see lights on the water at a distance. They were steady like large lanterns, not the flickering of flame. Ships, she assumed, but she would need to be very close for them to see her in the night no matter how bright their lanterns. She didn't want to deal with them. She didn't want to deal with anyone except Andromache. That was her first and only priority. She'd been wronged. She would take revenge.

Oh, how Andy would be surprised that Quynh was free! No thanks to her! She swam southeast, toward what used to be the Kingdom of France. She swam that night, the next day, the following night, the day following that, and into the next night. A fitful squall followed her when she neared shore, matching her emotions. She'd known nothing but anger and desperation and death for five hundred years. She had a singular, inhuman focus. She was a spirit of vengeance.

Cloaked by darkness, she climbed out of the sea. She expected her legs to be unsteady after five hundred years away from solid ground and days of swimming, but they held her just as they always had. Nothing more miraculous had happened in her long life than this simple continuity of existence, this durability of her body which defied all laws of the natural world. She understood more than ever why Andy had been recognized as divine. Because she was. And now, so was Quynh.

Her clothes had long since sloughed off, so she killed a woman roughly her size, tossed the body into a culvert and wore her clothing. She found a phone in the woman's purse. It had a screen that lit up with a picture of a strange dog on it. At least, she thought it was a dog.

She puzzled over the lettering on signs, though she was curious instead of confused. The new world was delightful, as magical as she was. She marveled over lights, glass, the cars, and industry. There were many strange materials she couldn't place – plastics and fiberglass and resin, but she didn't know what they were called. She moved through the streets freely, listening to people speaking languages she couldn't follow. There were occasionally words similar enough to something she knew that she could understand a bit of meaning. It was the sound of the language Sebastien used.

She knew his name. It was the one he called himself in his head, and the one his mortal families had called him. Joe, Nicky, and Andy called him Booker. She knew what he looked like, that he drank, sometimes smoked, and the last time she'd seen him, she'd glimpsed through a window a strange metal framework that reached into the sky like the skeleton of a stone column.

On one of the signs, she saw the strange metal framework. She pointed at it and drew the attention of passers-by, asking simple questions like, "What?" and "Where?" It was the Eiffel Tower. It was in Paris. She knew where Paris was (more or less – she still hadn't worked out where she was, but once she saw Nantes she knew where she was in relation to Paris). She walked part of the way there, then was picked up by a couple in a car who believed her to be a confused tourist who kept telling them, 'Eiffel Tower'.

During the long car ride, they helped her convert a few words of what amounted to ancient French into the modern tongue. It wasn't enough to hold a conversation, but it helped. She left them when they reached the tower park. She walked around it slowly. She used a piece of plastic in the purse to buy greasy, but delicious food, and enjoyed her first meal in centuries.

Finding the angle of the metal tower as she'd seen it in Booker's dream, she struck a course away from it, investigating the houses and apartments she passed by. It was a simple matter to look over her shoulder until she found the general area. She achieved the fine tuning by climbing to the rooftop even though she was yelled at by a pair of people on the ground. She jumped off on the opposite side and entered the building before they could harass her further.

Inside, she went up to the third floor. That was where the angle was right. She knew the side of the building it was on. She forced the door and found the apartment she'd seen Booker in before. It was cluttered and lived in without being homey or even comfortable. It smelled of mold in the walls and mildew in the corners and a funk of alcohol, tobacco smoke, and a man's sweat. Only one person was living here or had lived here recently.

She installed herself, waiting for his arrival. It was hours later. He was thoroughly inebriated. She subdued him. A handful of deaths later, she had him restrained using a length of wiring that had been snaked along a wall. He hadn't fought much.

"Tell me what name Andromache is going by," she asked when she finally allowed him to wake.

"No."

She frowned. She wanted the name she'd need to give mortals in order to find her. Telling them 'Andy' or even 'Andromache' was not going to help. Then again, she could barely communicate with people at all. Even with him, there were words she had to puzzle out through context and his speech was the closest to hers she'd yet found. "Tell me how to ask that question in your French. Repeat it to me."

He looked at her hesitantly for a moment, then repeated it, enunciating clearly. She said it back to him. He corrected her on pronunciation. She had it on the third try, or at least he didn't correct her further and the match sounded good to her ear. "What year is it?" she asked.

"Two thousand nineteen."

She'd heard that from the people in the car and already worked out how long she'd been underwater. It was hard to get her mind around, especially as any consideration of the years reminded her she'd been abandoned to her fate – not just by Andy, but also by Joe and Nicky, whom she'd counted as friends. She'd just been left there. Like they were done with her. It was so difficult to understand. Confusion led to pain that led to hate and hate was easy to drown in. Familiar.

She asked, "How do I say that in your French?" She had him go through numbers, letters, colors, and shapes. Then more/less, long/short, and various other useful modifiers that she could think of. He cooperated on this at least, even if he'd promised not to help in finding Andy. His hands were bound behind him and he was propped up against the door. He'd made a few shoulder motions early on testing his bonds, but stopped at a scowl from her. No doubt he would test them more thoroughly when she wasn't watching him.

She pulled the phone from her pocket. "Tell me how to use this." Maybe Andromache had one and she could speak to her on it as she had seen other people doing.

He looked surprised. "Ah … You have a phone?"

"Tell me."

He gestured at it with his chin. "There's a button on the bottom there. Just press that."

"Here?" She pointed at the recessed circle.

"Yeah, that. Press and hold until the screen changes."

She did. The picture of the weird dog was replaced with a handful of numbers and a grey bar with words on it. She squinted at them, then held it so he could see it. "What does it say?"

"It says that's not your phone. Your fingerprint doesn't match that of the owner."

"Finger … print." She looked at her finger. She knew what a fingerprint was, but that the device could tell hers from someone else's sounded fantastical. "Are you able to use this?" She offered the phone in his direction.

"No. I'm not the owner, either."

The owner was dead in a culvert back at the coast, so that was no help. But it seemed that most people had one of these devices. Half the people she'd seen had been either cradling one of these, studying the glowing screen, or holding it to their head to speak into it. "Do you have a phone?"

"Yeah."

Of course he did. "Where?"

He blinked one too many times as he thought about his answer and, obviously, how to lie to her. She stabbed him in the face as she had earlier, when he'd been staked to the floor. He jerked and tried to kick her. Not appreciating him trying to kick her, she stabbed again and twisted, sending the tip of the blade in enough of an arc through his brain matter that he twitched and died. She fetched his bedsheets. He was awake by the time she had them.

He told her, "You really don't have to keep stabbing me, you know."

"You keep lying to me. Or preparing to lie," she explained. "If you do not wish to be stabbed, do not lie."

He breathed out uneasily and looked away, like she was trying his patience. He was the one trying _hers_. She examined the fabric, cut it in wide strips, then rolled it and braided it. It took a while. He said nothing during it. Neither did she. She tied his ankles together while he sat there looking at her in stark disbelief.

"Really?" he asked. She ignored him. Once his feet were bound, she searched him, extracting money, cigarettes, what he told her was a lighter when she asked, a clever little folding pocketknife with a decent blade, and the phone she'd been looking for.

"How would I use this?" She showed him the phone she'd taken from him.

"I think you need to stab me again."

She obliged, sending the blade in another sweep through his brain to keep him out of it for the few moments she needed to get to his hands. He woke up with a yell as she cut off his index finger. "Be quiet," she scolded him as she propped him back up. "It will grow back."

He bared his teeth at her, though he still wasn't fighting much in her opinion. He was a strange one in that respect. She took the removed digit and pressed it to the button on his phone. He tensed and shifted like he was going to do something she didn't want. She dropped the finger to put the knife between his eyes, breaking the skin but doing no more. He backed down, pulling his head back the inch or so he could. She let him and turned her attention back to the phone, which had a different screen now.

This one was full of small, colorful squares with a backdrop of a camel in front of the pyramids of Egypt. She'd seen this pattern of squares on an advertisement in Nantes or some suburb of it. They were how you made the phone work. She studied them. "This can be used to call people who aren't here and speak to them."

He moved his feet nervously. She picked up the severed finger and pressed one of the colored squares with it. Another screen came up. She read through the text carefully. She got the gist of the words, but they didn't have context for her. "What does this one do?" She showed it to him.

"No," he said firmly. She turned a displeased eye his way. Booker added, "I'm not helping you find her."

"So this would help me find her?" She lifted the phone. She had thought this would merely let her speak to Andy. But it was a compass of some kind as well that would locate her?

He grimaced at her correct extrapolation. "I … don't really have that much compromising information on there. It's not going to help you." He swallowed nervously.

She couldn't tell if he was lying or not. But he had something on there or else he wouldn't be so anxious. It was possible he was playing her, though. She kept that in mind as she smiled and slid the phone into her coat pocket, along with the one with the weird dog on it. She added his finger to the same pocket.

She picked up the lighter. "How does this work?"

"It creates a candle flame. Do you see the little wheel on top?" She pointed at a likely part. He nodded. "Yeah. That creates sparks when you turn it. See the red, uh, lever? Under it? Yes, that. When you press that down, gas – flammable gas – comes out. So if you put your thumb on the wheel and turn it just a little, then press down on the lever, sparks light the gas on fire and you have a flame."

She studied it. The odds of this exploding on her seemed low. He seemed to be telling the truth for this, as far as it went, which was a helpful baseline for her to judge his other words against. She turned the wheel a bit and saw the sparks. She pressed the lever and smelled the gas. She tried doing them both as he'd described. It took several tries to get her grip right and keep the flame, but she managed it. "How ingenious."

"Yeah. You can use it to light cigarettes."

"What are cigarettes?"

"I have some, there. The little tubes." He gestured with his chin again.

She picked up a squishy cellophane-wrapped packet. He nodded. She pulled one of the little tubes from the pack. She'd seen people smoking so she was familiar with the concept. She went to put the cigarette in the fire.

"No, not that end!" She turned it. He nodded. She set it in the fire. He said, "No, that's enough. You don't burn it in half." She pulled it out. What was left of it was smoking. Part of it was ash. He was right – this didn't look like how other people had used them.

She sucked at the end she hadn't burned, grimacing and coughing. She'd smoked plenty of herbs over the years, but these tasted abominable, like licking the bottom of a used crucible. "Is that how?"

"Yeah. Give it here." She offered it to him, putting the tube between his lips. He sucked deeper than she had and breathed the smoke out with an air of relief. "Thank you."

She watched him smoke, his pulls causing the end to flare and darken just like when she'd seen other people doing it. He looked to be enjoying it. She lit a second one and tried to smoke it again. The taste did not improve. She went to the sink, ran some water, and doused it, then washed the flavor out of her mouth with the glass of water she'd poured earlier.

She turned and faced him, leaning on the sink and considering her options. While she was sure he had a scintillating personality and redeeming features, all she wanted out of him was help in finding Andromache. He would not help willingly. So that left other means. She could take the phones elsewhere and try to get help in using them, but apparently they only worked for their owners. Pulling out his severed finger wasn't going to gain cooperation from regular people. Also, she didn't think it was safe to leave him unsupervised.

He wasn't tied up well and with the apartments packed together as they were, he could easily call for help. It was convenient (and peculiar) that he had not yet chosen to do so. Perhaps he shared her interest in keeping things discreet. Neither the gunshots nor his yell had brought attention, so she might be overestimating people's nosiness or how much they could hear. Perhaps such sounds were normal here, but she hadn't heard them from any other apartment.

There remained the way she had found him – the dreaming. She'd seen Nile with Andy in a recent dream (weeks ago? Months?) Maybe Nile might see something in a dream of Quynh that would lead them here. Specifically, maybe she'd see Booker, and then Andy would come here without Quynh having to hunt her down. If Andy would not come for her, would she come for some exile like Booker? This would make a good test, Quynh decided. If she came for him when she had not for Quynh, then it would be clear Andy had renounced her.

It wasn't a good plan, but it was _a_ plan. Being able to do something with her life other than die over and over again was exhilarating enough that she didn't bother to over-think things. She just needed to set the stage. The first thing she needed to do was tie him up better. The second thing would be to remove his ability to speak and sabotage his neck in a way that prevented it from healing back. After that, she'd be freer to do as she needed without danger of him calling out.

"Do you want another cigarette?" she asked him politely, as the one he'd had had burned out and he'd spit the butt on the floor next to him.

"Sure."

She fetched him one, keeping him occupied while she went about stripping the apartment for fabric, fiber, and wire that she could use in restraining him. When she was ready, she shifted him to the bare mattress of the bed, which required his assistance for her to get him over her shoulders in a fireman's carry. She ignored his comment, "You _could_ just untie my feet, you know."

Once there, she rolled him onto his stomach and proceeded to tie him better.

He had more complaints. "That's too tight. It's cutting off circulation to my hands."

"You'll live." What kind of pampered life had he been living that he thought that was an acceptable gripe? If she could have, she would have tied him tighter, but it was already tight enough to, as he'd observed, cut into his skin and limit blood to his hands.

"You don't _have_ to do this," he said and there was an actual note of pleading in it.

"Will you help me if I do not?"

"With … some things, yeah."

"The only thing I care about is finding Andromache."

"Well … not that."

She scoffed and moved down to his legs, tying them over the jeans. He sighed, flexed his shoulders, and tried to get some slack in his wrists. Once she was satisfied he couldn't squirm out, she rolled him over and took off her coat. He said, "I appreciate being on the bed for this. It's better than the floor, but what are you-" He stopped as she took off her shirt, too. She left on the bra.

She folded the coat over the shirt and tucked them under one of his jackets to keep them clean from what she was planning to do. She saw the way he was looking at her. There was no arousal or anticipation in it. Dread, maybe. Concern. Confusion. She tossed her supplies next to his head, but he ignored them, keeping his eyes on her face. She mounted him, a knife in one hand. She settled on his pelvis with a lascivious squirm just to see his eyes get even wider. He said, "Uhhh … who- where- um …"

"Shh," she told him sweetly. "No more sounds." With that, she took his chin in one hand to push it up, then cut his throat. He bucked and struggled. Blood sprayed. She had to open the wound twice more to make sure he died before his healing could fix him. By the time he woke up, she'd tied off his trachea with a twist of wire and used a clothespin to clamp his vocal cords. He made a rasp when he woke, eyes wide and darting around, but he couldn't cry out and he couldn't heal around the wounds with the implements wired in place.

"Shh," she said again. "No more sounds." He couldn't respond. His shoulders jerked. He bared his teeth. She rode out his thrashing, thinking about her own five hundred years of dying and being reborn only to thrash and die again. She didn't expect to have to keep him this way very long – he wouldn't have to deal with five hundred years – five days, maybe. When he slowed down, she wrapped his neck with a length of cloth and tied it off to keep him from casually dislodging the makeshift gag.

He twitched from her touch in what seemed to be an involuntary manner, so she smeared his face with some of his own blood, amused by how he trembled. He also tried to bite her, but his teeth weren't quick enough. The blood was everywhere, with a great deal of it on her and the rest soaked into the mattress around his neck. She wanted to make sure that whatever Nile saw, it was gruesome. If Andy cared about him, then she'd come running. Just like she should have for Quynh.

She napped next to him, putting her head against his in the hope that Nile would see his face alongside hers. He was restless the entire time, probably suffering due to having his arms held behind him and the bonds being too tight. But at least he couldn't complain. She'd slept under worse conditions.

She woke to the sound of a knock at the door. She sat up abruptly. Were they here already? Booker shifted on the bed to look. She could hear voices outside as well, two men, saying things in the modern language she couldn't make out. Neither tone was familiar – not Nicky or Joe. They didn't seem to be speaking with the intent of being overheard. A key scraped in the lock and the door opened.

She was standing by the time that happened – scantily dressed and thoroughly spattered with blood. Next to her on the bed was Booker, bound and even bloodier, his head raised to see them. There was more blood on the floor in front of them from the many times she'd stabbed Booker in the face and head. In the doorway itself were two men, one old, short, and dumpy with a cane in one hand and a fat keyring in the other, the other man slightly taller, middle-aged, wearing a uniform of some kind and a variety of blocky implements around his belt. Both were dark-skinned. They gaped.

She didn't have to be a child of the modern age to know this did not look good.

She moved forward to the table. The man in the uniform was yelling at her to stop – she understood that much. She grabbed two of the knives there and launched one into his eye. He staggered back, fumbling the gun he's barely had time to draw. The other knife stayed in her hand.

She went to the landlord, who was quailing back, and slit his throat. Then she turned to the cop (not that she knew the roles of either of them) and did the same. Beyond him was a second man in uniform, lighter-skinned and younger, who by now had his gun drawn and as soon as his partner collapsed in front of him, he shot her. The bullets felt odd, hitting her with a solid punch that stopped her in her tracks. She stood there uneasily, possibly dying on her feet, possibly not.

When the world stabilized, she threw the knife in her hand into the man's face, then pulled the one out of the eye of the man at her feet. She closed to the cop now grasping uselessly at the blade sticking out of his nose. He shot her again, which nearly knocked her down. She regained her balance and killed him.

Hm. Three dead people in the hallway – this was inconvenient. Booker was too heavy for her to move far by herself and not likely to cooperate now that she'd muted him and made him lie in his own blood for hours while not being able to feel or heal his hands. She needed to cover her tracks and get out of here.

She went back to the apartment, took up Booker's lighter, and tried to light the bed on fire. It was weirdly not flammable with the fabric scorching and then going out. She made an exasperated sigh about the inexplicable marvels of the modern world and tried the curtains. Those went up fine. Booker began making rough gasps from the bed and thrashing. She lit the trash. She lit some pizza boxes and a newspaper. An alarm began to blare.

The place was going up pretty well by then, so she put on her coat, grabbed her shirt, and left. She needed to find a good observation point just in case Andy was near. She'd dreamed Nile in the fitful snatches she'd been able to catch – Nile was peering at a glowing screen, something Quynh had seen before so it told her nothing new. But hopefully, Nile had been able to see Booker.

**Author's Note:**

> In the movie, we see a cycle of Quynh dying and coming back. It takes no more than ten seconds. So 6 times a minute. 8,640 times a day. Three million times a year (rounding down for simplicity). That means 1.5 billion deaths in five hundred years. Even if we assume the movie is sped up (because seriously, who wants to watch someone suffocate over the course of several minutes?), and it's only 1 death every ten minutes (which is a more realistic reflection of how long it takes to die irrecoverably from asphyxiation), then we're still talking 26 million deaths.
> 
> Some things this proves (in my opinion): immortals do not waste away over time if they can't eat, there is no reasonable limit to the number of times you come back from the dead, the ability to come back from the dead is straight out magical. There is no way for it to be anything else.
> 
> The police showed up in furtherance of the investigation of the woman Quynh killed when she came ashore. She took the woman's credit card and phone, then used that credit card in downtown Paris. The police then triangulated off the phone to the building the same way Copley did for Booker's phone and they had the landlord give them access to the individual apartments as they used a handheld short-range scanner to narrow it down. Quynh still has that phone at the end of Heart Piercing, although it's nearly out of charge.
> 
> Smoking things in rolled up leaves was a solely North American thing until imported to Europe in the ... 1500s? Before then, Eurasian smoking was by scorching herbs in a bowl or burning them in a firepot, or the material was chewed or ground to a paste and then eaten.


End file.
